Danube's record low levels force shutdown of Hungary's only nuclear plant

vvrganj about 4 hours ago 65 commentsRead Article on bbc.com

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comrade1234•about 2 hours ago

Here in Switzerland during some heatwaves they have to shut down nuclear plants too because the river water is too warm and adding warm water to it would kill the fish.

petre•about 1 hour ago

Would a cooling pond with controlled discharge into the river maybe mitigate this problem? One could also cycle the water from the cooling pond through the plant's cooling loop. The worse that could happen is evaporate the water from the cooling pond which is gets replaced with new water (sans fish) from the river.

number6•about 2 hours ago

And it's not cold enough to cool the reactor

masklinn•about 2 hours ago

The reactor absolutely is not going to care, it’s the tertiary cooling circuit cooling for the steam turbines, it will have cooked off everything downstream long before it’s an issue.

This is entirely an ecological and safety concern.

seszett•about 2 hours ago

No that's never the problem, even 40°C intake is cool enough to cool a reactor, it's all just a question of returned water temperature that can be harmful to a river if too high (generally the limit in Europe is set to 30°C).

shakow•about 1 hour ago

Absolutely wrong. A difference of a couple degrees is not going to hamper cooling a reactor that is running at many hundred degrees.

Just imagine what it would spell for your car otherwise.

pepperoni_pizza•about 2 hours ago

You can totally retrofit existing nuclear power plants for closed loop cooling. I'm not sure what the cost would be, though, but it might be worth doing.

Elfener•about 2 hours ago

I've read that in the case of Paks a retrofit doesn't make sense because the entire thing is so old and needs to be rebuilt anyway.

However, hopefully, they change the plans for (stalled project) Paks 2, because that would've used the same cooling system as the first one.

moffkalast•about 2 hours ago

Is it economically viable to run though? Natural draft towers or direct body of water cooling is used almost universally since it doesn't take any extra power. A large chunk of the powerplant's output would be running heat pump compressors to stop itself from exploding.

wongarsu•about 2 hours ago

Fully closed loop is probably not viable. But I suspect that's not the extreme GP might have meant.

If for the sake or discussion we simplify cooling to four options:

1: just passing river water through a heat exchanger for cooling

2: ingesting river water, using it for cooling, then passing it through a cooling tower before returning it to the river

3: pass the water output from the cooling tower directly back in the cooling loop, only ingest enough water to replace evaporation

4: fully closed loop via direct heat exchange with air

Then 4 is not very viable. But a lot of nuclear plants are stuck at 1 or 2, and each step up the ladder would allow them to operate in worse conditions. This one seems to be at version one

noduerme•about 2 hours ago

How do these things, whose sole purpose is to turn heat into electricity, end up with so much extra heat that it takes more energy than they produce to disperse it? Can't the excess heat in a closed loop system be captured and used to power the cooling? Sorry, maybe this is a stupid question.

petre•about 1 hour ago

5. scrap 1..4 and build a gas cooled reactor instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-PM

emsign•about 2 hours ago

First of all you can't retrofit every npp with that, it's a lie. And eve; if you could, you are correct, it's financially not viable. Renewable energy is always the cheaper option by far.

Luc•about 2 hours ago

Of course a 1960's design isn't adapted to current weather conditions. That doesn't mean the whole technology is useless, like so many commenters imply.

Any new build can and will include cooling adapted to hotter conditions.

exploderate•about 1 hour ago

It's not matter of "can", it's a matter of "how much does it cost?" and "who pays for that?".

expedition32•about 1 hour ago

Precisely why the Netherlands does not have nuclear power plants. Cheap coal. Cheap oil. Cheap gas. And now cheap wind and solar.

They just absolutely cannot math the math which leaves ideology and this ain't France.

cucumber3732842•about 2 hours ago

>That doesn't mean the whole technology is useless, like so many commenters imply.

First day in the comments?

Everyone knows that, or could. It doesn't matter because the point is to use it to mislead people. The extra layer of indirection causes any given rebutter have to deal with that first and once that bullshit is peeled back it's still not provable that they're lying to mislead, they could just be stupid after all.

You see this on every goddamn topic.

roenxi•36 minutes ago

You're probably going to struggle to come up with a motive for that behaviour. It is much more likely that they simply aren't very thoughtful. Complex webs of deception in a public argument are certainly possible, but it generally relies on some group having a clear financial incentive to misdirect. That doesn't exist in the nuclear debate.

vrganj•about 4 hours ago

This is happening all across Europe right now - Romania, France too.

https://www.euronews.com/business/2026/07/13/france-shuts-do...

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/hungarys-paks-nuclea...

We keep having folks here argue that nuclear, not renewables are the path to take to get rid of fossil fuels. I have strong doubts - it feels like that doesn't account for the sad realities of climate change.

cinntaile•about 4 hours ago

People arguing for one alternative over the other are usually politically motivated. I feel like you are doing the same. Sometimes nuclear is a good fit, sometimes renewables is a good fit, sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit. Most of the time a mix is the best fit. It depends on what you are optimizing for and what is geographically, (geo)politically and economically possible. All these systems are then built using assumptions, sometimes those assumptions no longer make sense after a certain period of time and sometimes you just temporarily or permanently have to adapt to the changes in the environment. This is an unusual but expected scenario for the nuclear plants along the Danube.

seszett•about 2 hours ago

> sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit

There is simply NO safe level of fossil fuel use.

cinntaile•25 minutes ago

I don't know what you mean with "no safe level of fossil fuel use". It doesn't mean anything without contextualizing that statement.

danw1979•about 1 hour ago

There’s applications that we still have no alternative for though - e.g. aviation - so we’ll have to accept the burning of hydrocarbons there.

Not fossil hydrocarbons forever, of course, but synthetic kerosene might be a thing soon enough.

ben_w•about 2 hours ago

Disagree, it's just that the safe level is around 0.1% of current use (though I don't just mean use of fossil fuels for electricity, I mean *everything*).

dudefeliciano•about 2 hours ago

The point they are making is that climate change will further push these conditions, so are we willing to build more nuclear power plants, knowing that by the time they are ready to go online this problem will be worse? Or better to invest in renewables which can be implemented today and will alleviate this problem? A mix of both with heavy majority of renewables and nuclear/fossil only to guarantee baseloads seems like the best idea to me.

paganel•about 2 hours ago

Everyone is politically motivated on this subject, and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default, where the "political" is comprised of is, the voting citizens. We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.

gib444•about 2 hours ago

I'm not filled with joy about my chav ("redneck") neighbours weighing in on nuclear vs solar and climate change and national and international energy markets and power distribution...

I don't have a clue either. Don't ask for my vote on how to power a country. Take my taxes and use them to listen to experts

cucumber3732842•about 2 hours ago

>and that's a good thing, because this is a political decision by default,

Why is it a good thing that everyone and their brother seeks to apply state violence to micromanage what should be a fairly arcane technical issue?

>We can't let decisions like these be taken by unelected technocrats alone.

Do you feel the same way about topics where your opinion differs substantially from the local majority?

stavros•about 2 hours ago

Agreed, whenever I hear someone say "we need more/less nuclear and less/more solar/wind", I hear "let's burn more fossil fuels while we uselessly split hairs".

vrganj•about 3 hours ago

I'm not really opposed to nuclear power politically. I just think it's a non-starter given the much higher cost, complexity of buildout and lack of reliability.

deepsummer•about 2 hours ago

In countries with dark winters and without enough hydro power, the only reliable alternative are fossil fuels...

ThePowerOfFuet•about 2 hours ago

>sometimes fossil fuels are a good fit.

Oh come on.

xinayder•7 minutes ago

High temperatures also severely affect solar panel efficiency.

eecc•about 2 hours ago

It’s the second of third year in a row that this happens.

At some point it will be the new normal.

d1sxeyes•about 2 hours ago

https://telex.hu/belfold/2026/07/31/energia-krizishelyzet-ho...

Cthulhu_•about 2 hours ago

It can be, but you need water, just like for solar you need sunlight and storage and for wind power you need, well, wind. Coal and gas rely on natural resources, which can be disrupted through geopolitical tension, like Russia's gas supplies into Europe getting cut off / sanctioned.

Every power source has their tradeoffs, and I don't think anyone is denying that.

What I do think is that people are making up arguments or statements that Other People have and call them out on it.

flr03•about 2 hours ago

Different reasons though, France has nothing to do with water level or availability. It's for environment protection.

emsign•about 2 hours ago

Not true at all. It's both in France and increasingly because the rivers run dry in the summer. Besides killing rivers for electricity and for "saving CO2" is as stupid as burning coal to keep HVACs running becauae the summers are getting hotter and hotter each year.

stefan_•about 2 hours ago

This is a technical problem with technical solutions. You can just fix things, you don't need to throw out 30% of your power generation to pay billions for climate change vagueposting.

Cthulhu_•about 2 hours ago

Kind of? I'm sure you can change a nuclear power plant so it doesn't rely on river or sea water but that's not something that can be done overnight.

Restoring river water levels can't be done through technical solutions though, they rely on the weather and we can't control that. The European river levels are largely influenced by inland rain, snowfall, and glacier forming/melting; snowfall and rain has been meagre this year, glaciers have been melting and receding for decades now.

emsign•about 2 hours ago

Electricity costs by nuclear power is heavily subsidized by tax money in France, so the French are paying the higher costs anyway. Just saying. Maybe there's a technical solution involving nuclear but it's really expensive compared to the much cheaper technical solution: renewable energy.

raverbashing•about 2 hours ago

If only there was a power source that would excel during sunny and warm days, huh

Then we could stop the nuclear plants when needed for cooling and maintenance

seszett•about 2 hours ago

> we could stop the nuclear plants when needed for cooling

Well that's exactly what they did thanks to solar power provided by the rest of the grid, so your snark seems rather unwarranted.

emsign•about 2 hours ago

This is what nuclear power enthusists like to ignore when they talk about nuclear power being a solution to energy and climate change.

bsza•about 2 hours ago

Worth mentioning we also had to shut down the largest block in our largest gas power plant on the exact same day due to an unrelated error.

https://www.dert.hu/hu/sajtoszoba/0/141 (in Hungarian, couldn't find an English source)

Cthulhu_•about 2 hours ago

Is that a fact or are you just trying to spark a debate?

mertbio•about 2 hours ago

They also constantly criticise Germany and its nuclear power plant closures, linking almost every negative news story about the country to this issue. It seems they’re completely unaware of the potential consequences of operating a nuclear power plant.

fylo•about 2 hours ago

Every power source has trade offs, bud. They call solar renewable, but in fact panels have a shelf life, and take valuable finite resources and energy to manufacture. This is what climate change activists like to ignore /s